December 22, 2009 22:40
Hi Bob,
No emulators, just bootcamp drivers, etc.
I imagine it would be possible to run Maxsea TZ under VMware Fusion (it supports Directx 9), but would probably be quite taxing. I think if you're going to bother with the software, it should be run on Windows. It's a fairly hardware intensive app.
The weather module appears to do everything, it would take a while to explain every option. I'm not sure where the data is sourced from, I assume it's grabbing GRIB files behind the scenes. You simply highlight a region and click the weather update button. It can use your existing Internet connection, or deliver a compressed file via email/sailmail, etc. There's really too much to cover here, so perhaps I'll just post a series of screen-shots soon. The animations are all very smooth, making it easy to visualise patterns, and also quite entertaining to observe.
One nice feature is being able to supplement your own AIS with data from marinetraffic.com. I turned on this Internet option, and found tons of vessels of the East coast here. It even fetches photos of the vessels, if they're in the database.
I now have the East Coast Australia charts unlocked, Maxsea sent the info last night. There's no raster charts available for here, only the "Navionics Datacore" ones. They seem very similar to Navionics Gold, and are easy to read. All of the markers around here appear to be up do date and accurate so far.
Now, the bad news! The satellite data for Australia is absolute crap. It looks like someone took these pictures from the moon with a cheap digital camera, then zoomed in and saved them with very high jpeg compression. Why do we get stuck with $h*! data for our region? there's plenty of high quality sat photos that can be licensed (see google earth, virtual earth, etc). I hope they fix this. I'll be putting in a support request with screen-shots.
We don't have our boat yet (soon!), so I can't comment on usage in the real world. Based purely on how smoothly everything else runs, I really doubt having GPS/autopilot or other data coming in and being interpreted will make any difference in performance. Only future testing will tell.
Regarding licensing: It's 1 install per license. You can change computers by "deactivating" your current install on their website. I don't expect to run multiple copies, but I shouldn't be subjected to serial numbers for everything + activation. This is one of the main reasons almost all of the software we run is pirated. Developers should realise that if there's enough demand, your application will be cracked and distributed. Serials and activation only inconvenience your paying customers. (sorry for the mini-rant)
No emulators, just bootcamp drivers, etc.
I imagine it would be possible to run Maxsea TZ under VMware Fusion (it supports Directx 9), but would probably be quite taxing. I think if you're going to bother with the software, it should be run on Windows. It's a fairly hardware intensive app.
The weather module appears to do everything, it would take a while to explain every option. I'm not sure where the data is sourced from, I assume it's grabbing GRIB files behind the scenes. You simply highlight a region and click the weather update button. It can use your existing Internet connection, or deliver a compressed file via email/sailmail, etc. There's really too much to cover here, so perhaps I'll just post a series of screen-shots soon. The animations are all very smooth, making it easy to visualise patterns, and also quite entertaining to observe.
One nice feature is being able to supplement your own AIS with data from marinetraffic.com. I turned on this Internet option, and found tons of vessels of the East coast here. It even fetches photos of the vessels, if they're in the database.
I now have the East Coast Australia charts unlocked, Maxsea sent the info last night. There's no raster charts available for here, only the "Navionics Datacore" ones. They seem very similar to Navionics Gold, and are easy to read. All of the markers around here appear to be up do date and accurate so far.
Now, the bad news! The satellite data for Australia is absolute crap. It looks like someone took these pictures from the moon with a cheap digital camera, then zoomed in and saved them with very high jpeg compression. Why do we get stuck with $h*! data for our region? there's plenty of high quality sat photos that can be licensed (see google earth, virtual earth, etc). I hope they fix this. I'll be putting in a support request with screen-shots.
We don't have our boat yet (soon!), so I can't comment on usage in the real world. Based purely on how smoothly everything else runs, I really doubt having GPS/autopilot or other data coming in and being interpreted will make any difference in performance. Only future testing will tell.
Regarding licensing: It's 1 install per license. You can change computers by "deactivating" your current install on their website. I don't expect to run multiple copies, but I shouldn't be subjected to serial numbers for everything + activation. This is one of the main reasons almost all of the software we run is pirated. Developers should realise that if there's enough demand, your application will be cracked and distributed. Serials and activation only inconvenience your paying customers. (sorry for the mini-rant)